I’m not surprised. It isn’t that it wasn’t a decent show. There just wasn’t enough story there to really hold an audience.

I think the problem was that viewers were expecting a Keanu Reeves knockoff and got some British guy instead. More of the public “knows” that John Constantine “isn’t” British than do, which is a shame. There were some nice Easter eggs in the show for those of us who actually read comics, such as the mask of Dr. Fate.

What have we learned from this?

While Hollywood continues to mine comics for material, not everything can sustain a show on network tv. Especially not when the general public has already been exposed to something that’s significantly different from what they were previously exposed to. It couldn’t have gotten any different if the tv Constantine was black.

There’s also talk that the planned Agents of Shield spinoff featuring Bobbie Morse and Lance isn’t happening anymore because viewers like them exactly where they are. So that’s canceled before it even started.

I’m still not much of a fan of the fracturing of the DCU. The CW is building a universe, linking Arrow and The Flash, and now another show more than likely featuring the Atom is going to be birthed there, too. Three shows, sharing a universe, and those shows will also be apart from whatever movies they’re doing. I understand the reasoning, but I don’t have to like it overmuch.

There are a lot more shows that will make their way to the small screen. Supergirl has been ordered to series, and Marvel still has four more shows to do on Netflix. Really, it looks like Constantine is the odd-man-out when it comes to comics on television. It’s the only one that didn’t get renewed.